Cupcakes with fillings

Our good friends Tim and Caroline are going on a big massive holiday and so to farewell them our friend Dan made us all a massive amazing feast and to say thank you to her and farewell to Tim and Caroline I made the fauxstess cupcakes from vegan with a vengeance. Here they ready for the filling:

And here is my ugly first attempt at doing the icing. I just used the leftover filling instead of making the royal icing. It tasted better but was difficult to pipe. I also accidentally smudged a couple. It says Timline because that is what we call Caroline and Tim.


We also celebrated Mr T's birthday with lots of friends of sat night and I decided to surprise him by making more cupcakes which proved to be a rather difficult task when you live with the person you want to surprise. This time I made vanilla cupcakes with raspberry filling, chocolate ganache and different icing for the writing. I originally tried to make the royal icing in vegan with a vengeance but discovered that it tasted horrible since soymilk powder tastes like crap. So I made it up with both icing sugar and water and at first the texture was too watery and then it hardened up so much that I couldn't get it out. I also ran out of maple syrup and vanilla extract part way through and dropped half the bag of choc chips on the floor. It was disaster after disaster. I wrote out happy b'day Mr T(with his actual name) and made a couple of smiley faces and because I was so stressed and rushed to get it done before he got home I forgot to take any pictures but I think the writing was only slightly better. Whereas the ganache was worse because they weren't as tall as the fauxstess cupcakes and so I couldn't dip the cupcakes in the ganache and had to pour it on top instead. Here is the one inside shot that I have:

I prefer the vanilla raspberry variations. I made the raspberry icing using pure raspberry fruit topping that I got from the supermarket. It took lots of playing around in terms of adding more raspberry topping and then more icing sugar but I think I got the texture just where I want it in the end. I think I will retire from writing letters in icing now but I do think that all of my cupcakes should have a filling from now on :-)

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In other news I woke up feeling super sick today- sore muscles, very very sore throat, head and ears and we have our holiday in less than a week. Noooooooooooooooooooo! I always end up sick for holidays. Although this time I have been guilty of too many late nights, not enough sleep, eating out way too much, not eating enough fruit or veg, or drinking enough water and not getting enough rest. I'm off to see a traditional Chinese doctor now hoping that he can make better before the trip. Fingers crossed!